From the beginning of notated music, musicians have been composing music for other musicians to learn and perform. In classical staff notation, many composers have had or have the added skill of adding the symbols required, given a particular instrument, to explain the actual fingering of the musical score to be performed on the instrument by designating the fingers on the instrument for specific notes to accomplish the performance of the musical piece. That is called symbolic fingering notation. It is extremely important to the overall musical sound that the musical staff notation for each instrument have the proper symbolic fingering notation to maximize the efficiency of playing and control of time and sound (i.e., a way of the composer and virtuoso performer tell where to put your fingers). If fingering is added to a score, it is by this manual method and not automatically generated.
Although most string instruments also use some kind of tablature to determine the string length or pitch to be expressed other than standard musical notation, tablature is inefficient for the performer to play the piece since tablature only depicts the string length and not the proper fingering required to perform a musical composition.
The “Method of Automated Musical Instrument Finger Finding” is designed to automatically analyze musical data, which includes musical score and tablature data, and notate proper fingering for a musical instrument for someone to enhance their ability to play the music.
By far, most musical scores using both standard staff notation and/or tablature will not include fingering for the musician's maximum performance. Even if one does, the musician might want one or more fingering options of the score or portions of it. This invention analyzes music data (staff notation and/or tablature) for an instrument and provides the musician with the best possible fingering by predetermining what fingering to use for the instrument from the musical data. Range of notes, for example, would be a determining factor in the fingering. Other important factors would be tone, speed of performance, and the ability to play relaxed or natural to the physical limitations of one's skill level. Consequently, this invention also generates intelligent secondary options for the selection of fingering.
This invention would not only be useful for composers, but also for teachers explaining to their students the best way to play a musical composition, by music publishers allowing them to scan musical scores and have a “performance ready” printout of the music to sell, and by the performer who could now take any music available within the range of his instrument and use this invention to come up with a professionally correct fingering for the performance. This would be a tremendous time and labor saver.